Because He's Not You
by Captain Evermind
Summary: Written as a series of vignettes detailing Hawkeye's comparrisons of Trapper and BJ as he struggles to understand the nature of friendship. No slash. Chapter 4 now up. Faith.
1. Laughter

**Author's Note:** Hi all. This is intended as the first chapter in a series of vignettes comparing Hawkeye's relationships with Trapper and BJ. Neither is meant to be favoured over the other for now, so please don't take offence. They're very different characters and I'm treating them as such. Hope you enjoy. :-)

Because He's Not You.

Laughter.

_The banter flickers back and forth, such a staple of life here that neither ever really listens. It's never a competition, just a schoolyard game. They're like two kids, and they joke because they're incapable of stopping, even for a moment. Because if they can't laugh they'll end up crying. Sometimes, one of them will score a particularly good hit, and then there is laughter on both sides. Trap has the craziest laugh you ever heard, the widest, cheekiest grin. His eyes are like a devil's, golden and glinting with delighted evil. He is irrepressible, incorrigible, impertenent. Disarmingly attractive, and he knows it. His laughter sparkles with danger. For him, the joy is in the hunt, the pursuit of quarry, he plays his victim cruelly for all that it is worth, but somehow, he never oversteps the borders of jest. His gift is in caricature, in the twisted way that he reflects what he sees of life. He imitates McArthur in the shower, affects an upperclass British accent while playing golf, and proffers martinis in the voice of a Southern belle. He is a dancer, here and then gone, so swift that it is impossible to catch him, and only his mocking laugh remains. Together, they are a double act – The Ritz brothers, the Mills brothers, Groucho and Harpo, Tweedle dum and Tweedle dee. One wears an old tuxedo, snorkel mask and flippers, the other a pinstripe suit with the pinstripes running the wrong way, a McArthur cap, corncob pipe, and styleright black and white wing-tipped shoes. _

With him, it is a war. An amiable one, but still a war. Always, he seeks to prove himself, to wrest the title from the man who has held it for so long. I hate to admit it, but sometimes he comes damn close. For him, humour is a more personal thing. He is indiscriminate, sparing no one in his quest. He plays humour to the hilt, uses it as a calculated force, to empower or release. His laughter is like himself. Softer, reserved, genial. Only his blue eyes betray him, though they sparkle with goodwill, and a childish delight at every triumph. There is no subtlety here, less elegance in his wordplay, yet at the same time he manages to avoid the crudity and innuendo which to Trapper was bread and water. BJ has no specific target, anyone and everyone is fair game. His jokes are childish, contrived, somehow without freshness or life. Maybe just because I've seen it all so many times. It is possible to know what BJ will say long before he actually does. The banter still flies back and forth, but now it is an offensive, unwieldy thing, merely another weapon in our barrage of friendly fire. It is only in practical jokes that he truly comes into his own. Exploding cigars, buckets of water, rubber chickens – these are his genius. He is a master of innocence, enabling him to continue a jest long after his subject tires of it. He is always there, poker-faced, honest, friendly, impossible to suspect. Which, of course, makes him brilliant. He has a long, thin, respectable face, and balding honey-blonde hair. He tucks his shirt in tidily, and smiles in secret behind his morning coffee.


	2. Tears

**Author's Note: **I realise that this story changes tense and perspective between characters. Just wanted to let you know that this is entirely intentional! ;-D Thanks to everyone who reviewed! (((((Lucy and AEM1)))))) I'll try to stop with the annoying footnotes thing from now on!

Tears.

_It's cold. High above them, the callous stars wheel. They don't sparkle like they do in the poems. They're simply there. Cold, like the night air. He sits in the middle of a ring of stones, leaning against the basketball pole. He hunches over, hiding his face in his hands like a little kid. He rocks slowly backwards and forwards, his teeth clenched tight into the fabric of the shapeless army jacket to muffle the sobs. Even though it's freezing, his jacket is unbuttoned, and beneath it he wears only the thin surgical shirt, the crisp white crumpled now, marred by the sprawling pattern of the kid's crimson blood. Somehow, they never think of him crying. It's not supposed to work like that. To them, he's the cynic, the bastard, the one who isn't supposed to give a damn. The curly head is bowed to his chest, the slender hands twist and writhe, clenching and unclenching in an agony all their own. And he cries. Only Hawkeye knows. He knows, and he has no words to say. He kneels before his brother in blood, and suddenly, Trapper is somehow a thing of fear, untouchable. Between them stretches a vast distance which Hawkeye can never bridge. Never, because even though it's the same every time, with each new death the pain sharpens anew."There was nothing else you could do..." "He was dead already..." "Should never have been brought in here in the first place..." "There are certain rules about a war..." "You did everything that was humanly possible." He knows how futile it sounds. So he says nothing. The tears slip from between Trapper's fingers, and in the chill of the before-dawn air they turn to ice. Tiny beads of glass, frozen upon the gaunt cheeks of Trapper McIntyre, the doctor who doesn't care. _

BJ looks so vulnerable when he cries. He crouches on his cot, all softness and pain. It's a strange thing, to see a big man like that lose control so completely. It's frightening. And when he's like this there's no way of talking to him, no reasoning. Behind that quiet, gentle man there's this incredible anger, and it doesn't matter that I'm his best friend in the whole goddamn US army, because times like this even that's not enough, and he hates this war, and this place, and the food, and the stench, and the blood of children, and me most of all. He cries more than Trapper ever did, and somehow it's the more frightening for that. Because when BJ's crying, it's purely and obliviously selfish. He doesn't cry for the soldiers, not really. He cries for him. For the young man with the soft voice who's being gradually eaten away from the inside. When BJ cries, the intensity of it is frightening. Because you know that for every tear that slips down those clean-cut, respectable cheeks he's losing something. A bit of himself, and some days I don't know if he'll ever get it back. I think the difference is that Trapper and I were already corrupted when we landed in this sewer. BJ wasn't. He was... perhaps not innocent, but hopeful. So goddamn optimistic and proud and warm, and alive. And the difference is that now, with BJ, I'm slowly watching him die. Watching him following the same road that the rest of us all took. And I want to scream at him not to follow, to go back while he still can, but I know it's futile. You can see the bitterness in his eyes now, which never used to be there. You can chart the progress of this war, days, weeks, eternities, by the thin strands of grey in his honey-blonde hair. And when BJ cries, that's the worst. The days when he gets a letter from home telling him that the baby has cut her first tooth. And to me, it's incomprehensible, because I'm not a family man, can't understand how he can get so worked up over something so distant. Blood... death... ashes... these are real, these are here and now and painful. But BJ still remembers a time of golden sand and garden hoses, tiled roofs and table cloths and strawberry ice cream, and to see him slowly losing that is a reminder to the rest of us of what we won't admit, even to ourselves, that we've already forgotten. And BJ cries. He lies there and sobs over a lock of Erin's hair sent in the mail. And even when he's silent with his face turned towards the canvas wall, I can still hear him crying.


	3. Fidelity

**Author's Note:** Hey guys... sorry it's been a while. Got very caught up in RW stuff recently. Thanks for all your wonderful feedback. I've tried to take on a bit of what's been said, mostly trying to be a little more sympathetic to BJ, but it was tough with this chapter, as I wanted a reversal of what everyone sees as the norm. I'll be nicer tohim next time, I promise. Sigh Writing BJ is harder than I thought. He's far too straight forward and nice! Lol! Oh, and any ideas for new chapters are welcome btw! ;-)

Fidelity.

_It's one of those words which to them simply doesn't mean anything. An abstract concept at best, not something of any import in their day to day lives. They are recklessly, shamlessly, gloriously unfaithful, Lothario and Lucifer by equal turns, lovers in jest alone. To him especially, fidelity has no meaning. He laughs, and flirts, and seduces his way through every heart in the camp, and when they tire of him, he moves on. Like an impish blond firework sparking flames that he has no power to control. To Trapper, love is not something to be measured, guarded jealously and doled out in carefully divided portions. Not something to be kept in check, or analysed, or really thought about at all. It just is. And he needs it in the same way that he needs the alcohol; because it is an escape, because it drives him away for a while. And he's not faithful. Trapper John is never faithful. He's swift and fleeting, golden sand slipping through their fingers, no matter how tight they seek to grasp him. Always the player, the womaniser, the lying, cheating bastard. But, though few people know it, he is a family man too. Becky, and Kathy, and Lousie – his talisman, something that is far too precious to share. He never talks about them. Guards them with a jealously which surprises even Hawkeye. He never claims to be a loyal husband. Father Mulcahy used to say that he and Hawkeye had a great capacity for love. It doesn't seem to matter who or how, or even why, it's just love. And it's all careless, and light hearted, and no strings attatched, because Trap's that kind of guy. Here one day and gone the next. A kiss on the cheek, a knowing smile, a mocking laugh, and he is gone. _

Doctor Fidelity, I used to call him. I used to tease him about it, laugh at the idea that any man could stay faithful in the middle of a war ten thousand miles away from home. It was a running joke. I'd try to catch him out, invite him to help with the nurses' physicals, try to hook him up with cheap geishas in Tokyo, that sort of thing. He never fell for any of it. He was too principled to let me lead him so far astray, too sure of himself to let me mould him as I would. Perhaps I thought then that I could make of him another Trapper, a new and improved model, and that by doing so I could lessen the pain of losing the old. But if BJ is anything, he is his own man, and he refused. Refused to be moulded or reshaped, refused to become the replacement I sought. He was strong, and noble, and loyal, and I know that a fair few of the girlswould have fallen over backwards for him if he so much as asked. But he never did. Never. Doctor Fidelity, I called him. Until, one day, something snapped, and I was left looking at a guy who fell off the fidelity wagon. I can't blame him. Can't even be surprised. Every other guy I know has fallen, and few as often as Trapper John. But somehow, not one of those guys ever fell as hard as BJ. And -funny thing - somehow, with BJ, it suddenly seemed like a sin. Like something low and despicable and beneath contempt, where before it had simply never mattered. I cried that night. Not with tears, but inside. I dreamed of Peggy, all in white, with BJ kneeling in the mud before her, and of little Erin with flowers in her hair, dancing and smiling, and refusing to meet her Daddy's eyes.


	4. Faith

Faith.

_The walls are hung with bunting, red and blue, and streamers of white toilet paper. They sit together at the table in the mess, side by side. The one, slender and elegant, laughing handsomely at his own brilliance, the other morose and taciturn, curly head hunched into shoulders, elbows on the table in front of him, a beer can in one rough, bloodstained hand. The first laughs aloud and throws his arms wide, including them all in his embrace. At this moment, buoyed high with jubilation, he loves them all. There are cheers and screams of joy, and voices joined in a rowdy chorus, but through it all the other sits silent, staring into his sixth beer, then his seventh, and refusing to look at Hawkeye's face. There are speeches, and pictures shown on a broken down projector, and laughter on all sides. The Hawk slings a casual arm about his bunk mate's shoulder, grinning innanely. His eyes sparkle, so bright, so full of life. He is oblivious, caught up in a whirlpool ecstacy that he has no intention of escaping. Like a child at Christmas, delightedly oblivious to his friend's mood. And even if he did notice, it's only to be expected. That's just Trapper. After all, he enoys his pessimistic view of life. Never lets himself think, even for a moment, that something good might come out of the war. Never lets himself hope that it might be over. The laughter continues, and Hawkeye starts up Auld Lang Syne, tips his beer can so that it spills off Trapper's unruly curls into his eyes, and is rewarded with a cynical little half-smile. And then, as suddenly as if he's turned down the volume on the radio, there is a silence. And into the trembling silence, General Clayton reads the message with shaking hands. There is no ceasefire. And Hawkeye, his bubble shattered, swallows the tears and the hope together, feels suddenly the oppressive weight of his own arm about Trapper's shoulders. And he doesn't want to look, because he knows what he'll see, and it shouldn't be there. Hell, Trap was right all along, he's never had any faith to lose. But still, when Hawkeye finally meets his eyes, he's crying. _

That was the thing about BJ. He had faith. Believed, really truly believed, that he was here for a purpose. That one day he'd escape from here, and return home a better man. Believed, of course, is past tense. When BJ arrived, he was a kid. Squeaky clean, fresh scrubbed, Doctor-and-Mrs-Hunnicutt cordially invite you to witness their upcoming celebration of apple-pie-America. That sort of thing. Now, BJ lives in a louse infested tent with a gutful of bitterness, and his best friend is a patched-up distillelry. He grows a cheesy moustache, and tells everyone that it's his own little rebellion. But it's not that, or at least, not entirely. It's to do with faith, with forcing himself to remember something which, though he won't admit it, simply doesn't matter any more. How can a pretty girl and a baby he doesn't remember mean anything, when everyday he stands in a swill of blood and fishes around in kids' intestines for shrapnel like it's some bizzare treasure hunt? I think, in a way, that he actually believes that this is Hell. And in BJ's mind, there is no return. He can never go back now to Peggy's lasagne, and powdered infant formula, and lavender scented sheets, never go back to a time when he could still conceivably go home. There's always been this incredible guilt about BJ, but more and more, I see it overtaken by anger. It's a strange thing, to look at your best friend, to see the gin glass in your own hand, and realise that it's him, not you, who's the alcoholic. And in a way, I feel guilty too, for pushing BJ so hard, for wanting to make him into something he should never have been. I had him drunk as a deacon within two hours of his arrival. That kind of thing leaves a scar. More and more now, I have trouble remembering the BJ who arrived here. More and more, I find myself swearing at him, hating him, then picking him up off the ground and crying with him. Now, more and more, BJ reminds me of Trapper John.


End file.
